Catherine Shainberg - DreamBirth: Transforming the Journey of Childbirth Through Imagery

For my son, Sam

Imagination is not the talent of some men, but is the health of every man.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

CONTENTS

PREFACE

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

MARC CHAGALL

THE NURSE CAME out into the empty waiting room and told me I was pregnant. I had come in for a menopausal test. She showed me the blue dot at the bottom of the cup I had peed in and said this meant a baby was growing in me. I sobbed loudly and for a long time. I couldnt believe it. I was forty-one.

When I finally opened my eyes, the whole room was suffused with soft light. Was it the sun or my emotions? This miracle had happened to me! The shock of amazement stayed with me all through my pregnancy, coloring my every thought and move. Joy grew into a torrent of love and gratitude when I set eyes on my sons face for the first time and held him in my arms, and then later as I watched him grow.

I knew next to nothing about the realities of pregnancy, and my mother and my teacher were far away. So I stocked up on books. I devoured everything I could find, feeding on the clinical facts of a pregnancy and what to expect when labor starts. But there was no book to guide me through the surge of emotions that was shaking me, no dreaming map to this new land I was growing within me, no voice I could hang on to that could lead me down the spiraling path as I searched to connect with my baby using my words and my imagination.

I had so many questions. Could he hear me? Did he feel my love and care for him? Was he developing correctly? Was he protected from the noise and agitation that surrounded me? Was he discovering himself, curled into himself and tucked under my heart? Would he like me, and would I like him? How could I sense, see, and know this stranger growing inside of me?

As my pregnancy progressed, I began to develop my own language of communication. I spoke to my baby endlessly in words, and I sent him images I saw in my minds eye. I dreamed of him at night and daydreamed about him during the day. I sang him songs; I gurgled and hummed. I stroked my full belly to soothe him when I thought some disruption had upset him. I showed him how he would slide down the birthing canalwhich I visualized as the stem of a flower that was opening wide to let him throughand be born into his fathers arms in a beautiful garden. My outer and inner worlds grew lush with scents and extravagant blooms. I was immersed in dreaming the magical world of baby and me. I was so much in love that no distraction reached me.

Of course, I had always been a dreamer.

The thought of writing a book about the dreaming power of a pregnant mother never occurred to me. I was in my ivory tower exercising my dreaming with my beautiful growing child; nothing and no one else mattered.

So imagine my surprise when, years later, I was approached to start a training group for birth professionals in prenatal and postnatal imagery. I was not so sure about taking on another responsibility. At that point in my life, I hadnt worked in the birthing field at all. My main clients were people searching for themselves and their spiritual path. But the person who asked me, Claudia Raiken, a craniosacral practitioner and doula who was also my student in imagery, assured me that I would not have to do anything to prepare. Just let them come and ask their questions, she said.

I had helped many women give birth over the years, using a few simple imagery exercises taught me by Colette Aboulker-Muscat, a revered teacher and lineage holder of the Kabbalah of Light, the Sephardic way of dreaming.birth, and others I had created over the years, specifically for body training and physiological problems.

Still, I wondered what I was going to teach this group. Certainly they could learn the simple relaxation exercises. What else could I do for them? I wasnt a midwife or doula and had no experience in the birthing room except for having given birth to my son in 1986. I was soon to be relieved of that worry.

As I was trying to decide whether to start this training group for birth professionals in prenatal and postnatal imagery, an event occurred that left me thrilled and amazed.

I had gone upstate with a friend to pick up an art piece. An antique dealer had just died and we decided to attend the auctioning off of his collection. Toward the end of the event, I suddenly felt the urge to get up and walk among the objects to be sold. In a corner placed on a table among other forgotten pieces was a large beaded doll. I felt compelled to pick her up. The doll was about twenty-seven inches high, done in African beaded work, and had a pouch made of striped fabric, very worn, over her belly. I signaled the auctioneer that I was willing to bid. No one else was interested, so for the paltry sum of twenty dollars, I bought the doll.

When I got home, I set her up in my entrance hall. The very next day a friend dropped by with a guest who, by chance, was a specialist in African art. His reaction was astonishing: Youve got a spirit doll! Impossible! Nobody gets one unless theyre meant to. This is a fertility doll, passed on from mother to daughter. It protects the women of the family and their offspring against dangers in childbirth and labor. See, in the pouch, theres the baby!

I knew then that my dreaming body had led me to the doll. She was not a particularly attractive specimen, but clearly she had been created with powerful intent. I was struck by the serendipity of a fertility doll landing so conveniently in my lap just as I was asking myself if I should tackle the subject of birthing! I felt certain this was a message from the universe and that I would have guidance in creating the work that would help pregnant women around the world visualize perfect births for their babies. I decided to give the class.

Claudia gathered together seven birth professionals, nurses, psychologists and doulas, all women, to begin training with me. One or two dropped out and a couple more joined us. We met every Wednesday for seven years. The process of creating DreamBirth was collaborative. The birth professionals were my guides to what their clients needed. I created the imagery exercises and walked the birth professionals through the images, and they gave me their feedback. When we were satisfied that the exercises were effectively doing what they were meant to do, the professionals took them to their clients. We got more feedback. Without those seven wonderful women, this work would never have been conceived, gestated, and born.

The DreamBirth imagery exercises are short, precise, and effective. They are designed to consciously move the body and/or the emotions to break up entrenched patterns of fear and old belief systems, restore the natural flow of movement in body and mind, boost the immune system, and facilitate an optimum use of natural capabilities. Today we have more than eight hundred exercises designed for every eventuality dealing with the birth processand the most prominent and frequently practiced of these exercises are featured in this book. While we have not yet been able to set up clinical trials, the circumstantial evidence for DreamBirths effectiveness in facilitating a satisfying birth experience is overwhelming.

As I write, we are setting up a research project that we hope to test in hospitals. I have no doubt that our research will prove what we see happening every day to the parents and children we work with: an overall enhanced satisfaction with their birthing experience, healthy and contented mothers and babies, and a quick return to health and well-being for those who have experienced medical intervention.